The Era Bandit
by kingstonboy
Summary: A villain with hideous ties to the Justice League's past presents them with an ultimatum: change or die! Only one JL member knows the secret to destroying the mysterious criminal's power source - now, he just needs to realize it while there's still time..
1. Chapter 1

The man wore a suit of constantly shifting metal, constantly forming and re-forming; a type of technologized plate armor, with shimmering blue bands of plasma coursing through entire design.

"It's authenticity, my friend," he said, pacing in a semicircle around his captive. "That's the problem. At one time...during one particular, golden era...you used to have it."

Behind the man, dozens of screens displayed troops spread throughout the underground complex; on several, skirmishes were being fought. At the touch of a button, all the screens' channels switched, and began broadcasting a dizzying bombardment of hyper-kinetic color. After the initial visual shock receded, the screens' content became clear: dozens and dozens of cartoons.

"And now, you don't."

The man's captive suddenly thrashed beneath his bindings, prompting a subdued frown on the man's behalf; at the touch of another button, a set of needles on the end of a robotic arm pierced the captive's shoulder and released payloads of sedative into his bloodstream.

"That's the only reason I'm doing this. Not because I hate you – god, no. Because I want to fix you."

From a heap of titanium shackles, a battered and drugged Batman met the man's gaze, totally impassive.

"They'll be arriving soon. And then you'll see."

****

Wally chuckled to himself as the seven mecha-henchmen before him stumbled face-forwards onto the ground, their powered suits suddenly disconnected from their internal assessed the remaining horde: two more powered-suit contingents bringing plasma-rifles to bear, and a piloted mech.

_No external seams on that guy,_ the Flash observed. _Could be trouble. _

He crouched down into a sprint and headed towards the lusciously vulnerable power-connectors springing from the henchmen's back suit-panels.

_Lucky for me that I brought backup._

Green Lantern hovered complacently in front of the mech's gigantic, twin ocular receptors. They glittered hungrily, locking onto the glowing figure as iridium missile-launchers clicked into position at the mechanical beast's waist.

"Uh...any time now, GL!"

The Flash prepared to take out the final group of rifle-wielders, who were beginning to take aim and squeeze rounds off in the direction of both superheroes. Wally eyes the mech's missile-apparatus; the radiation off those things could cause a problem.

"What do you think, Wally? Laser-cutters? Plasma-Superman? A team of primate mechanics with wrenches?"

"I don't think it matters, Kyle!"

The mech's missiles began sputtering to life as Wally raced around the rifle-bursts, heading towards the final seven henchmen's weapon-sources. They hadn't gotten the message that they were about to be trounced.

"Come on, man!" GL hollered over his shoulder, ignoring or forgetting about the teammates' Martian-provided mental link. "How often do we get to deconstruct robots this big?? Someone put a lot of thought into this design!"

"I DON'T CARE, KYLE!"

The last few henchmen were battered into unconsciousness at super-speed, and Wally whirled 'round to the sound of laser-guided missiles preparing to launch. GL vanished from his mind; the Flash began calculating trajectories and speeds. _Wind pressure to lateral fins; switch the flight paths and get them out of immediate area..._

But instead of firing a volley of ballistic death missiles, the mech's red LCD eyescreens widened in panic. A shattering clank echoed from his belly and, suddenly, his limbs clattered harmlessly to the floor. The pulsing red light of its outward panels shorted and disappeared; panels fell away, revealing a skinny man bound helplessly in a tight black pilot-suit. He grinned apologetically...bashfully, even...at the two heroes. The flash glowered, as the pack of glowing green monkeys armed with screwdrivers piled out from the remains of the death-machine.

"...Seriously? You almost got us killed and then decided to go with the primates?"

"Yeah," Kyle sighed, "it really deserved better. But I just couldn't get the image out of my head once I said it, like a bad pop song, and when something's stuck in my head..." He lifted his fist, where the green emerald ring sputtered an excited plasma-light. "Well, you know."

The Flash glowered. The black-leotard-clad pilot cleared his throat from within the wreckage of his mech.

"Hey, uh...guys, if I could just say, I'm actually a big fan, and this whole thing is one big mis-..."

One super-speed-punch later, he was unconscious.

"Come on," said Wally, "we'd better get to the control room and make sure the big guys are holding up OK." A moment later, it was just Kyle and a slipstream alone amidst a pile of unconscious henchmen.

_That's your whole problem, West,_ he psychically beamed with as rueful a mental tone as possible, _you're all substance; no style._ With a glimmer, green shackles appeared around the arms and legs of the mounds of criminals, and then Green Lantern was gone, racing after the fastest man alive.


	2. Chapter 2

Flash got there first; as usual. Except...'there' was strangely empty.

_I'm sure Batman's specs pegged the communications hub to this quadrant..., _thought West. His footsteps echoed throughout the chamber as he looked around, letting his gaze linger; there was no need for superspeed here. The room had miles-high ceilings and rows of shelves, like a giant warehouse; but only a few boxes remained. Against the stainless-steel holding units and weirdly sterile white floors, the Flash's scarlet bodysuit of pure speed-force seemed affrontingly foreign. He felt like an invader, as he tended to do when wandering around the long-inhabited bases of megalomaniacs...especially megalomaniacs whose names he didn't know; invasive, and out of place.

Then the Flash leaned over one of the steel holding-units and the feeling, abruptly, vanished – only to return a moment later, many times compounded. He reached a gloved hand into the giant bin, and withdrew a familiar-looking simulacrum; it had yellow boots, mercurial headpieces, and a scarlet red bodysuit with a lightning bolt cutting down the center...

_...What the?_

The Flash stared hard at the vacant eyes of his own plastic action-figure, and knew immediately that something was deeply wrong.

_GL? Kyle?_ He mentally beamed, drawing on J'onn's latent mental link. _Batman?_

Nothing.

The Flash's gaze shot back towards the labyrinthine hallways, and then he was off; only the speediest of camera-shutters would have noticed, a few pico-seconds later, a gloved hand returning to the bin to momentarily shift through – and take stock of – its reservoir of carded Flash, Green Lantern, and Batman figurines.

****

Green Lantern was zooming through the mazelike white hallways, dutifully tracing the Flash's mental signature when he noticed, amidst the endless white-walled repetition, a gilded frame hanging from a wall.

The hero immediately froze mid-flight, gently hovering in place. He glanced down the hall, towards Flash's slipstream, and then back at the hanging frame. Immediately, Kyle flashed back to several hours before this mission, in the Watchtower. He had been playing 2001: A Space Odyssey on a ring-generated TV screen, against the backdrop of the 'tower's windows into actual space. The irony had been delicious.

_Kyle_, Batman had said, appearing behind him. _Have you been using those perception meditations we discussed?_

_For mmfSure_, Kyle had said, through popcorn. On-screen, HAL began explaining his evil plot to the captive astronaut.

_Good. Intel indicates we may find ourselves busy, imminently; I want you keen in the field. Your teammates – and that ring – need your full attention. Remember: no distractions._

_Mnf – I gotcha_, Kyle had said, munching away as Batman departed to haunt another JL member. Onscreen, a mammoth space-station floated languidly through the void of space; behind the TV, asteroid-debris passed over the moon's Sea of Tranquility at exactly the same pace.

_Man, Kubrick's a total genius_, _eh, Bats? ...Bats?_

Kyle completed his reflection and realized how pissed the Caped Crusader would be to find him examining decorative artwork in the middle of a headquarters infiltration. But by that time, GL was already hovering up-close to the framed artwork and holding a green-plasma-constituted magnifying glass. And before he had time to move beyond the ornate, gold-flecked Victorian frame to its actual contents, GL's ears were set ringing with the sound of an enormous crash.

_Ah, crap,_ thought Kyle. _I know this feeling. This is the feeling I get when Batman is right about something. _

At either end of the hall, giant steel blast-doors had closed down from the ceiling, sealing off the hallway segment. GL realized he was experiencing a sensation of motion; the entire hallway shook and seemingly shifted, and before he could raise his ring to fire off a plasma-mortar or pair of rocket-powered buzz-saws, it was over. The motion ceased, the lights extinguished themselves, and the blast doors at one end of the hallway slid upwards with a pneumatic hiss to reveal a backlit figure, whose hulking tech-suit pulsed with veins of blue. Squinting through the glare, Kyle could make out a mosaic of monitors and a bound figure on a raised dais.

"Green Lantern; youngest League member and wielder of a ring fuelled by pure imagination," boomed the figure, his voice reverberating throughout the metallic chamber, "I hope you'll momentarily ignore the unconscious and chained Batman behind me, because we have much to discuss."

As Kyle rose to face the man, currents of light poured forth from his ring, streaming upwards to form a monstrous broadsword with a pulsing green blade; around GL's body, his protective forcefield morphed into an exoskeleton equipped with shoulder-mounted lasers. A dozen laser-sights, projected from the suit's torso, came to bear on the center of the tech-suited man's chest.

"Sure," said GL, striding forward, "let's talk."


End file.
